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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28186515">Firsts</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessthepsychic/pseuds/darksisterhood'>darksisterhood (jessthepsychic)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>end of the world [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout 3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, F/M, Fallout 3 - Freeform, julien catherine, this is just something i wrote a lonnggg time ago about my courier/lone wanderer’s backstory</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:35:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,830</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28186515</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessthepsychic/pseuds/darksisterhood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Julien reflects on a couple of her firsts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Amata Almodovar/Female Lone Wanderer, Butch DeLoria/Female Lone Wanderer, Jericho/Female Lone Wanderer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>end of the world [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064858</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Firsts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>War.<br/>
War never changes.<br/>
They taught us this everyday in class in the underground bunker I called home. We were taught lots, but the two things that never changed were our dictatorship government, and war.<br/>
I was thirteen years old when I had my first kiss. It was with Butch DeLoria. There were only a couple kids I remember besides myself; it was me, Amata, Freddie Gomez, Wally Mack, Paul Hannon, and Butch (probably some other people too, but I don’t know).<br/>
Butch was a relentless bully to Amata and I. He stole the sweet roll I was given on my tenth birthday, and he was always telling Amata how nice she looked, but in, like, a creepy way, y’know? It might have been because Amata and I were the only girls his age, I’m really not sure, and I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.<br/>
Back to the story, though. I was never the brightest kid, and, god, I’m still not the brightest adult, by a long shot. Butch liked to bully me for my misunderstandings, but it wasn’t like he was one to talk. He ended up becoming the vault hairdresser, after all. I remember the day he kissed me. It was after a math test outside the classroom. Amata was talking to her insufferable father, and I don’t know where Butch’s gang was.<br/>
I was fuming. I had failed the test! It wasn’t until recently that I had realized how much trouble I had with school. Being the doctor’s daughter had its advantages, one of them being my father helping me with homework for years and years. It was a disadvantage, too, though, because I never remembered anything he said.<br/>
My face was red, my head about to explode any second. I really didn’t know how I could have completely failed the entire thing. I was supposed to be smart, I was my father’s daughter, after all!<br/>
“God, Julien, you look like a tomato,” Butch had snickered as I crumpled up my paper after glaring at the big red ‘F’ on the page.<br/>
“Oh, can it, snake!” I sneered, chucking the balled up paper at his face.<br/>
He dodged it, and I cursed silently to myself. “Stay up too late last night letting ol’ Dr. James do your homework again?”<br/>
I had about had it with him. Without Amata to stop me from doing anything irrational, I just about socked him in the face, then and there. “Jesus, Butch, don't let the door hit your big head on the way out.”<br/>
“At least I have a brain.”<br/>
That was the comment that sent me over the edge. I may have been stupid, but at least I had dignity. I was raising my hand to slap him when he kissed me. It’s not like it was a long kiss, oh no, it was quite short. I don’t even know if it qualifies as a kiss. He pecked my lips, and then stepped back.<br/>
However, thirteen year old Julien didn’t care if it was for one second or ten, I was still enraged. How could he do that, catch me off guard and leave me so vulnerable? My face was even hotter than before, and I could almost feel the smoke coming out of my ears when my open palm finally hit his cheek.<br/>
Dad grounded me for a week for slapping Butch DeLoria after he stole my first kiss. </p>
<p>War still hadn’t changed by age fourteen.<br/>
It was summer, just before my fifteenth birthday when I first ‘fell in love.’ Quotes around love, because I refuse to believe I was ever truly in love until I met Benny in Vegas, but that’s beside the point. There were no more than eight kids my age in the vault, so this was a huge deal to me. I often wonder now how they ever reproduced with ten kids max per grade, but I guess it doesn’t matter now.<br/>
Amata had been my best friend since I was born, pretty much. We were basically the only girls in the vault at this point, our mothers were both dead, and we were both treated unfairly for our fathers’ higher positions among our small population. Destined to be friends, right? She was there when we first entered kindergarten, when I read my first comic book, and when I first socked Butch in the face on my tenth birthday, so we were basically like sisters.<br/>
Things changed that summer though. Amata hit puberty far faster than I did, and so when my father finally told me I was a healthy developing young lady, Amata was where I went.<br/>
We talked about lots of things, like our changing voices and our growing legs. Amata was now probably the tallest kid in the vault, even taller than Paul Hannon, and she also had what Freddie always called ‘the biggest rack.’ Amata had to explain to me what that meant.<br/>
Along with these new changes came new feelings. Girls no longer had cooties, so Freddie was constantly hitting on Amata, and I found myself thinking about my dream wedding instead of paying attention in class. Amata and I only had each other to trust, so when we decided we wanted to open ourselves up to the dating world, we dated each other.<br/>
My father thought this was wonderful, Amata’s thought we were too young to be even holding hands, and the rest of the younger vault population just lost their two most eligible bachelorettes. There was no real way to be ‘popular’ in a bunker with a population of thirty, but if there was, we would have been the most popular girls in school.<br/>
There really wasn’t much to do in the vault, especially during the summer. We swam in the pool and had ice cream every night, but that was kinda all there was to do. Of course, Amata and I were far above everyone else, because we had each other. While Butch and Wally Mack were busy arguing over a name for their 4 person gang, Amata and I were making out in the lower levels of the vault (until her dad found us and started stationing a guard there).<br/>
Honestly, that summer was the happiest I’d ever seen my dad. Despite Amata and me having absolutely no similarities to him and my late mother, I think we reminded him of what they once had, y’know, before she passed on. He told us to practice safe sex, and always be prepared for a surprise pregnancy, despite the fact that Amata and I never had sex, and we could never have conceived a child (which was something I only realized far after I emerged above the surface, and years after Amata and I had our fling). Amata’s father hated when Dad would say these things, and it was really rather funny, because only a couple years later my dad was telling me if I ever tried anything with Butch, he’d kill Butch and then lock me in my room for the rest of my life. Of course, the thought of my first kiss still haunted me, so I really wasn’t planning on even touching Butch’s shoulder.<br/>
Amata and I shared a nice thing, how unreal it may have been, but just like all good things, it came to an end. In September of the same year, we decided to break it off. We said it was mutual, but really she dumped me. I was never mad, though, at least I don’t remember being mad. We were both fifteen and I think Amata was realizing she never really liked girls in that way to begin with, and it wasn’t like I was heartbroken. As her father always said, we are born in the vault, and we die in the vault, so it wasn’t like I had a choice to cut her off. She was the best friend I’d ever had, and even if I tried to avoid her, I’d still see her anyway.<br/>
I had her back, and she had mine. Straight up to the end.<br/>
When my father escaped the vault, Amata was the one who woke me up. She held off her father so I could escape (only after learning of Butch’s mortal fear of roaches, which was something I never knew I needed), and she saw me out up until the last second.<br/>
When her father went crazy, she called for me. I remember so clearly, even after forgetting so much, how I found her in my father’s old office, long after he and Jonas died. The tug on my heart I felt when I hugged her again was so different from the one I felt when I saw Dad again, even from the one Jericho gave me when he held my hand while we roamed the wastes. I missed her.<br/>
Nothing had hurt more in my life then when she kicked me out those doors. Well, door. The vault only had one door.<br/>
I wanted to stay there. I had found my father and now he was dead. I had dumped Jericho on his behind as soon as Dad was gone. I had nothing left out there, but so much left back inside. I never got to tell her what she meant to me, how I wanted a life and a family with her.<br/>
I don’t know why I did. I had long since lost feelings for her, but she was all I had left. She ran the vault though, and she kicked me out.<br/>
Everything hit me all at once. My father’s death, Amata throwing me out, Jericho being gone, everything. Butch moved to the city, and I drowned myself in whiskey as he consoled me.<br/>
I remember Butch telling me I could start a family with him instead, but I still don’t know if he was being serious.<br/>
I never found out what happened to them. To Amata, and Butch, and Jericho. And Freddie Gomez, and Wally Mack, and Paul Hannon. I like to think Amata lived a good long life as overseer, got married and had children. But Butch probably died in the wastes once I moved on from the capital (he never was too great in combat), and Jericho probably died of old age or alcohol poisoning after I left him. I could have saved them. If I hadn’t followed my dad out of the vault that day, Butch would have never left, Amata would have never kicked me out, and Jericho would have never met me, leaving him to die peacefully in Megaton.<br/>
It hurts, sometimes. And the worst of it is what I did in the capital will never compare to what I did in years after. I was always a good person, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have to make sacrifices to keep myself alive.<br/>
The government of the vault changed from dictatorship to democracy with Amata took over. But war never changed. It never changes.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>will probably post more fallout stuff eventually hope u enjoy</p></blockquote></div></div>
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